Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.-based Innovasea has announced the creation of a new technology that will allow fish researchers to more easily retrieve data from unmanned vehicles.
The new technology, Innovasea said, is a new module for Teledyne’s G3 Gliders – an ocean-based autonomous vehicle commonly used by researchers. The new module, Innovasea said, will allow the gliders to be dispatched to the company’s remote VR4-UWM underwater receivers to offload data.
“This revolutionary new capability will make data retrieval much easier for scientists, who are using AUVs more and more as part of their research,” Innovasea President Mark Jollymore said. “Rather than having to charter a boat and spend hours traveling from receiver to receiver, our new module and its sophisticated software let researchers send out a glider to collect data from all their receivers in a fraction of the time.”
Innovasea’s VR4-UWM receiver, the company said, is a passive acoustic listening station that can also communicate with vessels using an acoustic modem – meaning it doesn’t need to be retrieved and redeployed in order to collect data. That communication ability, coupled with the glider module, will allow researchers to use the receivers as a way to offload data, rather than chartering boats to retrieve either the glider or a receiver.
The gliders can be either piloted remotely or run pre-programmed routes at a speed of up to two knots and a depth of up to 1,000 meters. The gliders can also be used in shallow water and beneath ice, according to the company.
“We are pleased to be working with Innovasea to add this capability to Slocum gliders,” Teledyne Webb Research APEX Product Line Manager Clara Hulburt said. “The variety of sensors integrated on these gliders means that this robot will be collecting sensor data while also retrieving data from the VR4-UWM receivers. This partnership continues to improve environmental capability whilst reducing cost.”
The first researchers to receive the new tech will be the Real-Time Aquatic Ecosystem Observation Network (RAEON), in collaboration with the Great Lakes Acoustic Telemetry Observation System, Innovasea said. The researchers will use the gliders in ongoing research in the Great Lakes region of the U.S. and Canada.
“This is a game-changer for servicing our deep-water acoustic telemetry receivers in the Great Lakes, a logistically difficult and costly area to work, but so important for understanding fish ecology in these large lakes,” University of Windsor Professor and Science Director at RAEON Aaron Fisk said.
Photo courtesy of Ben Allsup, Teledyne Webb Research
